Don Norman: Designing For People

The checklist manifesto.

Gawande, A. (2010). The checklist manifesto: how to get things right. New York: Metropolitan Books.

A strong argument for a simple, yet powerful tool that can help reduce the incidents of error, accidents, injuries, and deaths: checklists. Extremely successful in commercial aviation, their use in other safety-critical applications is surprisingly controversial. Experts scorned them: "Are you implying I don't know my job?" (The correct response is, "we know you know your job, but you are human working in an environment with many interruptions, distractions, and complexities. Even if the chance of an error is one in a million, given the billions of people in the world, that is not a good enough number: try it, you may be surprised by its value. And even if you don't need it, if you use them, you will set a positive example for all those people who do.")

This book makes a strong case for the adoption and use of checklists. Its major focus is on medicine, but the lessons apply everywhere.